 |
| Mary Catharine Martin cooks dinner along the Nisutlin River in the Yukon in September 2014. (Photo: Bjorn Dihle) |
Six years ago this summer, I hiked up Juneau’s Granite Creek
Basin with my partner Bjorn, looking for berries. It was my first season of
gathering in Alaska, and everything about it was thrilling. Red, yellow, and
melon-colored berries named for a fish. Lush, red, velvety berries named for
the way they fit on your finger like a thimble. I hadn’t liked blueberries very
much growing up in Virginia — they emerged from plastic boxes mushy and
tasteless — but blueberries in Alaska were an entirely different thing, a
hundred times version of what I knew.
fingers, but I barely noticed. Bjorn and I had just met, and I was making big,
sweeping statements, trying to impress him.
told him.
— not least of which are that it contradicts itself. (I wouldn’t be happy
if I wasn’t living a life I found interesting; I tend to think most things
considered deeply are interesting; interesting things make me happy).
by the world and its possibilities. It’s an idea inextricably tied to writing.
(The Oatmeal has a great comic about
happiness and art here.) We’re
lucky, us writers. Most things become interesting when we are challenged to
convey them well. And Alaska, though it does contain its share of dish-washing and
computer-staring, can also be a place that shakes you out of yourself and what
you know — whether you’re living your own life or researching the life of
someone you’ve imagined.
haven’t lived everything you write about. I’ve never committed a criminal act
out of desperation, or been a fugitive on a fishing boat, or an orphan in a Louisiana
swamp. The protagonists in The One that
Ran Away, the novel I’ve been working on for the last six years, have. I’ve
never been a woman searching for her sister during the Klondike Gold Rush either,
but I’ve been planning a protagonist like that in my next book just the same.
I’m excited about the research I’ll do: I’ve begun stockpiling historical
accounts, memoirs from stampeders.
Ultimately, I’m sure I will also make a few journeys — re-hiking
the Chilkoot Trail, floating parts of the Yukon — because while it is far
from the only way to research, nothing informs fiction like experience.
 |
| Floating along the Stikine River in 2015. (Photo: Bjorn Dihle ) |
At the end of my most recent draft of The One that Ran Away, a chapter in which a 13-year-old girl is
lost and alone in the Tongass didn’t feel right. I spent hours staring at my
computer, writing a paragraph, deleting it. Finally, I decided to walk alone
around Douglas Island, where I live. I sidestepped sea anemones at low tide. I
avoided two young black bears by wading hip-deep in the ocean. I scrambled
around cliffs. I got crushed mussels in my shoes and soaked my socks with
blood. I set up camp on the beach, got creeped out, shoved everything back in
my pack and walked another hour as the sun was setting. By the end of the
second day I’d stopped avoiding devil’s club and begun scrambling up steep
hillsides by digging my bare fingers into the dirt — and this was just a
two-day trip.
write it; I don’t think that at all. I believe, strongly, in unfettered imagination.
Heck, Laura Hillenbrand’s chronic fatigue syndrome means she does most of her
research from her house, and it clearly works for her nonfiction. (There’s a
great article about that here).
My imagination just feels most unfettered when I’ve been immersed in the best
research I can do. Experience undertaken for research also challenges you,
which has the added benefit of making life more interesting.
still a pedicurist’s nightmare. That hike, though, was the highlight of my
summer, and the chapter that came from it was a joy to write.
write what interests them. I also think, however, that if you are writing what
interests you, it should become something you know. For me, much of this
preference comes down to confidence. Whether I’m teaching or writing, I always
want to know more than I can possibly convey — it makes what one does convey
that much richer.
boxes, the best way to know the wonder of an Alaskan blueberry is to taste it.
is a Juneau writer currently sending out her book, The One that Ran Away. It interweaves the stories of three
generations of runaways and spans rural Louisiana in the 1930s to modern-day
Las Vegas and Southeast Alaska.
Great post, Mary Catharine. I love doing research for my historical novels–have been to lots of cool places because of it.
Thanks, Lynn!
Wonderful! Enjoyed envisioning the trip.
Loved this so much. It's great to get a perspective that makes me appreciate where I live, it's so easy to take for granted
Thanks, Jeff and Danny. 🙂 Next week: giant evil talking cockroaches. At least that's what I'm working on now…